Mother’s Day Reflections On Mortality

I’ve lived my life really only celebrating Mother’s Day. My dad wasn’t in my life, so Mother’s Day was always the most important. However, this Mother’s Day will be unlike any other, for quite a few reasons.

Yes this is the first year that I am able to celebrate Mother’s Day as a mother myself, but not only that, I get to celebrate the day with my mom, her first Mother’s Day being a grandmother. As well as celebrate with my soon-to-be Mother-In- Law who is also celebrating her first Mother’s day being a grandmother.

It brings me joy, but at the same time I wonder a lot of things.

When my daughter was born, I had the baby blues, and ever perhaps a twinge of postpartum depression. Looking back now I see it, but at the time I didn’t.

One thing being a new mom did was make me face the very real idea of my own mortality.

When I was younger, I never thought I’d have kids. In fact, I recall myself saying it out loud on a number of occasions. You know those years, you can finally drink legally and all you want to do is party, party, party.

Now here I am, probably close to a decade later writing this article with my almost 4 month old daughter in my arms. (Ok on my lap, how else could I type) And I couldn’t picture my life any other way.

But boy did it make me think.

At some point within the next few years, my daughter will reach an age that I can remember from my childhood. My earliest memory is from 4 years old. I’m already to the point in my life where I am as old as I remember my mom being. That was hard enough to deal with.

So I can only imagine how the newly-made grandmas feel. A second generation, a new child they can spoil like crazy and hand off to the parents for all the hard parts. To be there with advice on how they dealt with us as babies. Pointing out our similarities to our daughter, or differences from when we were young.

It must be a bittersweet realization.

I’d like to hear from you, if you’re a grandmother. How did it make you feel when your first grandchild was born? Happy? Sad? Somewhere in between?